(Paris) A gendarme was injured Thursday in Saint-Martin as part of the violence and roadblocks that have blocked the West Indies for two weeks and which led to the extension of the curfew in Guadeloupe and Martinique during the day.
Guadeloupe, Martinique and Saint-Martin are experiencing a strong social movement, born from the refusal of the vaccination obligation for caregivers and firefighters and which has extended to political and social demands, in particular against the high cost of living, causing violence and looting. and fires. The two islands are placed under curfew.
In Saint-Martin, a small island which depends on Guadeloupe, clashes on Thursday opposed the gendarmerie to a group of people at Sandy Ground and Nettle Bay, where the police were trying to evacuate a carcass of car on the road, and a gendarme was injured.
At the end of the morning, at the entrance to Nettle Bay, “we suffered three bursts of fire in our direction,” said the gendarmerie. A member of the security forces received a bullet, which crossed his left leg and lodged in the right. “His days are not in danger,” said the gendarmerie.
In Guadeloupe, “given the continuing disturbances to public order in certain municipalities with in particular the arrest of armed individuals, the persistence of gatherings intended to block the traffic routes, fires of dams”, the prefect Alexandre Rochatte decided “the extension of the curfew” between 6 pm and 5 am “until December 7, at 5 am”, on 21 municipalities, including Pointe-à-Pitre, explains a press release.
“This night was marked by several attempts to relocate obstacles on the roads”, such as “the fire of a stolen school bus. […] in order to cut the RN1 “, according to the prefecture, specifying that” ten new arrests took place during the night “.
A similar decision to extend the curfew was taken in Martinique, but until December 4 at 5 a.m.
In this island, the gendarmerie launched on Thursday a major operation to dismantle all the blockades of roundabouts.
Already during the night, gendarmes and national police had intervened on the sites of Mahault and the Brasserie Lorraine, in Lamentin, giving the places the appearance of an urban guerrilla.
Traffic seemed to be completely restored during the day, according to an AFP journalist, with the exception of two blockages: one at the port-where many foodstuffs remain stored, causing shortages in several supermarkets, the other in front of the refinery.
The intervention of the police, however, allowed the rotations of about thirty trucks, for about 80 filling of service stations, which created many queues around the gasoline pumps.
During an intervention at the Choco-Choisy roundabout in Saint-Joseph, which required a helicopter and three bulldozers to remove a dozen charred vehicles, “we had smiles, bravos, thumbs up. , it is heartwarming, ”a source of the gendarmerie told AFP.
In Guadeloupe, to try to get out of the crisis, elected officials met for four hours with the “collective of organizations in struggle”, but the meeting mainly resulted in once again asking for “the arrival of an interministerial mission to obtain firm commitments on points falling within the competence of the State or requiring its reinforced involvement ”.
“Contrary to what Lecornu (the Minister of Overseas Territories, Editor’s note) said, almost all of the points” of the platform of demand “fall under the intervention of the State, at the highest level”, explained to the press, Elie Domota, spokesperson for the LKP.
Negotiations with Sébastien Lecornu, who arrived in Guadeloupe for an express visit on November 29, had come to an end because of the refusal of the unions to condemn the “attempted assassinations against police and gendarmes”.
In Martinique, the minister promised to open discussions on “the adaptation of the modalities of application of the law on the vaccination obligation”, already postponed from November 15 to December 31.